Married to Jesus

In the last few years I have been preoccupied with the idea of Jesus as a husband; perhaps because I've been single so long and require Him to fill that role in my life, but also because the bible uses that image to explain the relationship between Jesus and the church. The trouble with it is that the Western world has changed the meaning of love and marriage so we can no longer understand the significance of this, or we gain a superficial view of Jesus. I hope to challenge the Western view of marriage in order to highlight the covenantal relationship the bible says that Jesus makes with us.

Sociologist Anthony Giddens' (1997) research showed that before the Age of Enlightenment the interests of parents, family members and the community were more important in arranging marriages than romantic love was. People did not marry for love but for property; although these marriages often developed into deep affection because of shared life experience in raising children and managing a household. In contrast, most marriages in the West begin with love and end up being about property (especially in the case of divorce where property is divided). The majority of traditional human societies accepted polygamy (one man and multiple wives) as the norm, but since the 1800s in the West, the only form of marriage that is acceptable is monogamy, based on love.

At its very core, marriage today is seen to be a contract: two people who love each other and sign a document that makes them legally joined (and therefore harder to separate). With the introduction of the prenuptial agreement, marriage is reduced to a contract with clauses i.e. in case of divorce, you retain this and I retain that. It is cultural and religious expectations that give marriage more meaning than a mere contractual agreement. Christian marriages in particular are marked by a ceremony where two people make vows to each other before God, as well as signing a legal document. This is reflected in contemporary Christianity where we begin the relationship with Jesus with a vow (a sinner's prayer) and we seal this with a water baptism, where often a certificate is given as a reminder of the confession (like signing a contract). The trouble is that a contract is not sufficient in holding two people together, evidenced by the staggering rate of divorce in our society (greater than 50%). Making vows before God is a way of ensuring that God is involved in the fulfillment of those vows, but this puts us in a difficult situation with God if we do not fulfill these vows (Matthew 5:34-37). Likewise, saying a prayer and signing it with a symbolic contract does not equate a lasting relationship with Jesus.

Some would say it is not the contract that sustains marriage, it is love. If romantic love is believed to be enough to sustain a marriage, then its any wonder that marriages dissolve when that love has died. Romantic love is spectacular the same as beauty is spectacular, but the bible says that beauty is fleeting (Proverbs 31:30) and so too is romantic love. Yet since romantic love in marriage is what the Western world has held to, it is easy to see how a relationship with Jesus has become about 'feelings.' We use phrases such as "on fire for God" or "in love with Jesus" as evidence of this belief. The bible does not view this as foundational for a relationship with Jesus. The bible talks about Jesus making a covenant with us through the offer of grace in exchange for our sins. This is laid out for us in Jeremiah 31:31-34.

"Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah --not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.
"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

These verses refer to the act of God on our behalf (forgiving our iniquity and becoming our Lord) and all we have to do is be His people. The bible tells us that we do not choose Jesus, He chooses us (John 15:16; Ephesians 1:4). In fact, like a typical woman, we rejected His advances. However, Jesus is the persistent lover who does not give up the chase. He is so loving and so trustworthy--what He has to offer is so great--that we have no choice but to accept Him. Who wouldn't accept such an offer? Once we surrender to Him, He puts a desire to fufill His law in us; He changes our heart and He becomes our God. The bible says that a mark of a true Christian is someone that has love for others and obeys God (John 2:4 & 10). This type of love isn't a feeling, or else God wouldn't be able to command it of us (Matthew 22:37-40). It is the way that we act and the truth that we believe (1 John 3:18). Loving God is: believing He is who He says He is, and following what He says for us to do because we trust Him as our Lord (the authority in our lives).

We enter into a relationship with God, not out of a romantic notion of Him and our feelings towards Him, but because of what He offers us and our belief that He will keep His promises. A covenant differs from a contract, in that God can make a covenant with us that contains a promise and a cost on His side, but asks nothing of us but to agree. This is what we refer to as grace. It is not just that we are forgiven, but that we are gifted with God's blessings on top of that forgiveness and we could never be deserving of it.

No one ever asks a couple that has been married for a long time whether they still feel the same fire that they felt when they first got married. People understand that something deeper grows as time moves on. A more appropriate question would be: "How well do you know each other?" The biggest testimony in a relationship is whether a couple has learnt things about each other. It still surprises me that some people, after many years of marriage, can still so thoroughly misinterpret one another. They are suspicious of the motives of the other person because they believe they understand them, when really they have only succeeded in building up a false image of that person. They still do not see the things that anger the other person, or how to avoid arguments. They do not know each other's dreams or ambitions. They are like single people who live together. The trouble is that is not a successful marriage. That is not even a happy one. Why then do we expect or ask each other, as Christians, whether we are still on fire for God? It is so juvenile. The question we should be more concerned with is whether we know God more now than we did when we first entered a relationship with Him and whether the God we know is really God or whether it is just an image of the God we want.

To be 'married' to Jesus we must accept His promise (proposal), it is confirmed in a ceremonial baptism (vows), but not defined by it, and through worship, prayer and studying it deepens. What could be more important than knowing God? It doesn't matter what you feel, examine whether you know God and ask yourself whether knowing God has changed you. This is a marker that you can judge your faith by.


References
Giddens, A. (1997) "Sociology". Third Edition, Polity Press.